"Ishmael" -- have you read it?

[TheOlderGuy]

The book is almost thirty years old, and aside from not being much more than a short short story in full length novel form, it has some thought provoking ideas about the nature of modern culture.

Any feedback?

 

[Guest]

at first i was ganna say... "who hasn't read moby dick?"

did a google and i think i found the book. about discussion between ape and man?
seems interesting.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

It's a 1970's crock of half-baked, simplistic, back-to-nature ideas based on the premise that "civilized" people are "takers" and that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket ever since the rise of agriculture.

The author never addresses the obvious contradiction that the only reason Ishmael the gorilla/teacher has all his ideas is due to his long association with civilized "takers."

My kids were impressed when they first read it, but that was back when they were in junior high.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Trinique_Fire]

i thought the book was a piece of shit. a psychotic teacher i had frosh year of high school had us read it and got some culty little frosh followers out of it. IMO that crap shouldn't have been written. she thought that book was God and treated it as such.

'nuff said

 

[cantdog]

Some people really don't want their thoughts provoked, TOG. We discussed the book and it's slow-to-materialize thesis. It's a part of the Parable of the Tribes thing. Mankind evolved to live in small bands and slowly has been forced by circumstance to live in cities of millions. Every step of the way there has been what seemed like good reason for it, each time.

Suppose you were in the tribe next door to the one which began doing agriculture along the monoculture model. While in the "long term" organic and sustainable practice seems to be otherwise, the culture which maximizes food in the short term can field a larger army, so your tribe has to get with the program, or go under. If you go for the third alternative and come up with something better, something giving you the edge over his innovation, then he needs to get with your program, or go under to your tribe. Step by step, humans have made those decisions to preserve their cultures from their neighbors. In the end, we all have a sort of nightmare life of a rather unnatural kind, but there is very limited choice in the matter. A culture which refused to live in cities would have to figure a way to do it without sacrificing parity, in terms of efficient projection of power, or else go under. The issue is discussed in The Parable of the Tribes by Bard Schmookler, I believe, although I haven't owned the book for many years and I may have the author's name garbled. It's much bigger than the single decision referred to in the Ishmael book.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I'm with Rumple and Trinique on this one. I've read it, and it was a painful act to do so. It's so crammed with inaccurate assumptions and romanticized views of nature that it's difficult to turn over a page without closing your eyes to some blatant falsehood. I don't mind fiction presented as such, nor do I mind having my assumptions challenged, but this was a gathering of slipshod, lazily constructed and factually incorrect assumptions presented as both fact and wisdom. I'd love to be more specific about its problems, but I no longer own a copy; it's one of the only books I've ever owned that I actually threw in the trash.

Shanglan

 

[Trinique_Fire]

I'm with Rumple and Trinique on this one. I've read it, and it was a painful act to do so. It's so crammed with inaccurate assumptions and romanticized views of nature that it's difficult to turn over a page without closing your eyes to some blatant falsehood. I don't mind fiction presented as such, nor do I mind having my assumptions challenged, but this was a gathering of slipshod, lazily constructed and factually incorrect assumptions presented as both fact and wisdom. I'd love to be more specific about its problems, but I no longer own a copy; it's one of the only books I've ever owned that I actually threw in the trash.

Shanglan

Hey I threw mine away too.

 

[cantdog]

I didn't think it worth keeping, but the idea warranted a footnote.

 

[TheOlderGuy]

I found reading it very tedious. Everything he had to say could have been said in a page or two. The prop of the gorilla and the excruciatingly slow way the story evolves--well, I cna't recommend it as a good read.

However, I did find the central premise interesting, that we are destroying ourselves as a species; that a long time ago humans began to behave as if the world was made just for them, and that all other life could be manipulated or disposed of based on how they fit into our scheme of things; that by trying to fool with mother nature we will eventually extinguish ourselves. That part of it couldn't be truer.

 

[TheOlderGuy]

And I was reminded the past few days that it's people like The Amish who take no more than they need from this world that Ishmael was speaking of in his ploddingly verbose way.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

that a long time ago humans began to behave as if the world was made just for them, and that all other life could be manipulated or disposed of based on how they fit into our scheme of things

That makes no sense. Isn't that what all life forms do? Isn't that the normal way of the world? Lions hunt their prey as if it was put in the world for the sole purpose of being food. I don't think lions stop hunting during their prey's mating season so that they have a chance to replenish. Trees grow to be closer to the sun, and if in the process they cast shadow over all other plants trying to get that same light, all the better: less competition for the nutrients in the soil. For each animal, for every plant, for every single-cell organism, the whole world was created for them to do as they see fit, immediately.

The key is, humans should begin to behave as if the world hadn't been made just for them. Because we're capable of seeing beyond. Or should be. Maybe we're still only animals.

 

[TheOlderGuy]

That makes no sense. Isn't that what all life forms do? Isn't that the normal way of the world? Lions hunt their prey as if it was put in the world for the sole purpose of being food. I don't think lions stop hunting during their prey's mating season so that they have a chance to replenish. Trees grow to be closer to the sun, and if in the process they cast shadow over all other plants trying to get that same light, all the better: less competition for the nutrients in the soil. For each animal, for every plant, for every single-cell organism, the whole world was created for them to do as they see fit, immediately.

The key is, humans should begin to behave as if the world hadn't been made just for them. Because we're capable of seeing beyond. Or should be. Maybe we're still only animals.

and that was the point of the book. some die so that others may live. the weak perish, the strong survive, the species evolve through this process. all that is entirely right. but all those other species take only what they need to survive. instinctively they know that if they start being wasteful, they themselves will suffer. modern man ignores this law of nature, because he believes that he is in charge of right and wrong, and can manipulate nature to his own advantage. modern man, who wipes out entire species in order to get cheap lumber, or more oil, or larger and more opulent cities, puts himself above the gods, or so he thinks.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

but all those other species take only what they need to survive. instinctively they know that if they start being wasteful, they themselves will suffer.

That's bullshit, though. LOL. It's not at all what happens in nature. That "instinctively know" never happens. What does happen is that they start to suffer and start to perish and therefore can't continue to take as much as they did before - sheer numbers.

 

[TheOlderGuy]

That's bullshit, though. LOL. It's not at all what happens in nature. That "instinctively know" never happens. What does happen is that they start to suffer and start to perish and therefore can't continue to take as much as they did before - sheer numbers.

Many, of course, perish. And many are gluttons, even in the animal world.
But I believe the part of a species evolution is the instinctual knowledge of what works and what doesn't, what you do, and what you don't. And no other naimal comes close to human's crass wastefulness.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Many, of course, perish. And many are gluttons, even in the animal world.
But I believe the part of a species evolution is the instinctual knowledge of what works and what doesn't, what you do, and what you don't. And no other naimal comes close to human's crass wastefulness.

This is one of the many places where I differ with this book. Yes, it's good for humans to examine their own actions, but only because we are more than animals, not less. For sheer wastefulness, there are plenty of examples in the animal world; we need look no further than the aftermath of a weasel in a henhouse, or a dog that's taken to savaging sheep. Animals waste things under roughly the same circumstances that humans do - when there's so much available that they don't need to worry about where the next bit is coming from. They also do it with less foresight than humans; humans, after all, keep the hens in the henhouse and take them one at a time.

It's foresight - which in any complex sense is a human trait - that we need, not animality. Yeast, simple little creatures that they are, are content to eat the lovely food as fast as they can, reproduce all over the place, and gradually drown in their own excretions. Sharks, far from knowing what works and what doesn't, will eat their own trailing intestines if they're wounded in a feeding frenzy. Tasmanian devils, whose wild populations are currently heavily infected with lethal facial tumors, continue to consider biting each other in the face (and thus injecting each other with the transmissable tumors) the right thing to do.

The problem in all of those cases is not that the animals are being unnatural, but that they are being perfectly natural animals. They are doing what instinct has always prompted them to do, and they have no idea why it won't work in this specific circumstance. They are animals, and they haven't got the intellect to work out that in the long term, their actions will destroy them.

Humans can do that. But we do it not by embracing animal instinct, but by rejecting it. Unlike animals, we can learn to care what happens to things that don't immediately concern us, like the air or the water or the ecosystem as a whole. I think it's wise for us to do that. But we'll succeed only if we stop thinking like animals and start thinking like something more.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

As always, Shanglan, you've explained my point perfectly!